"Mitt Romney, putting the pathetic, in empathetic."

It would be really a miracle when I see the media become objective in their reporting. You are suppose to be i.e. reporting. I am not for either canidiate because all I can concentrate on is our journalists interjecting their own agendas and beliefs. Maybe they should run for office. I really think the media needs to be reminded of their responsibities.Do not push your opinions on us as truth. Just your one opinion but you have the advantage of the media. You fail as journalists. The American public or at least I have more smarts than that. Hope that works for you. They call it AMERICA.

And none of them claim to be journalists.

I too could not believe that Romney would try to laugh off the dog and high school incidence. I guess that's what you call "Mitt wit".

He signed a pledge. Google it.

I like to see and hear their own words where you read something the no telling who wrote.

You're suggesting he signed a pledge supporting creating a constitutional amendment against gay marriage by accident? Did he not read it? Did he think someone was asking him for his autograph? Did his pen slip?

Whatever thin defense you can imagine for him, it would be hard to imagine that he signed this thing without knowing what it was, and it would be an even further stretch to believe that if he opposed it, his campaign would not denounce it, if someone was claiming that he did sign the pledge.

No matter which thin way you want to play that. Whatever hypothetical situation you could envision. It would not be Rachel Maddow's fault then, for thinking that Mitt Romney supported a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, when his name is on a pledge advocating a constitutional amendment against gay marriage!

You defended him and you insulted her without knowing the facts. That is fine, nobody can know everything. It's not your fault that you didn't know. My suggestion though, is stop here. Because you were demonstrably wrong, and you'll only embarrass yourself if you keep going.

Type "Mitt Romney Marriage Pledge" into Google. Scroll down.

Thank you. Have a nice day.

I saw a video tonight with Obama telling from his book (Dreams From My Father) how he did drugs and bulling a girl when he was in collage. But that don't make a rats a to me. People change from when they were young. I judge people on what they do now. Lets see. Raised the debt three time what it was in only three years , more than all the other presidents combined. More people are on food stamps now than ever. Unemployment still at 8%, 11% if you count the people who stopped looking for a job and so much more.

We can't take four more years of this crap.

El Woodb

try it like this without using your little fingers. then add #1fox and msnbc ratings in toilet. while it is a little early for you to include personal details with only two posts under your belt, add something about how you have just started on medicare, served in the us army for 4 years in amsterdam, and finally - this gets them every time - do the old pirates of penzance trick - tell them you are an orphan.

you are new at this but we are always looking for new talent.

now to make this look convincing to the other posters, feign outrage at my post - your mother died just yesterday - thank you very much for reminding me that im an orphan. or - i served 20 years, what did you ever do for your country you commie hippy with your jane fonda pinups and your shirts made in vietnam.

then of course i wont reply and you get to throw out a tag line - im waiting for your reply mr. adam_commie_selene - someone should apologize!

now get out there and break a leg - dont worry, ive got your back tovarich.

comrade adam_selene

I'm sorry, I don't think so.

Please find someone else to list republican talking points at.

I'm not interested in arguing for the sake of arguing alone. I don't have the time to explain how wrong you are. But don't be discouraged, there are plenty of other people on this site who would just love to engage you on economics, unemployment and the budget.

If you're not interested in talking to anyone, you can still feel free to scroll through the archives of this blog, where you will find several charts with reliable sources and links showing you clearly how completely wrong what you just said was.

What we cannot take is four more years of right wing pundits and partisan special interest groups spreading propaganda and misdirection and convincing good people like you, that the facts are wrong.

Again I'm not blaming you, or dismissing you, I just don't have the time right now to deal with this kind of nonsense. People argued on Tv or Radio, and they grumbled and they complained and they lied through their bottoms and I'm sure it was entertaining, Fox News is good at entertaining, but it was horse manure. You shouldn't be blamed for listening to professional snake oil salesmen. I'm not trying to insult you by saying you were tricked, I'm just trying to say, I don't have the time to correct for all the idiocy that Fox News and their kind are responsible for.

Have a nice day.

I'll admit that when someone states that something is or isn't true they should show evidence of it...however I am pretty sure this is what Rachel did in her podcast. Now I'm going to have to rewatch to verify and until then cannot engage that aspect later. But your second post elwood is A. full of factual errors and B. is a red herring from the initial point that YOU started. YOU made claim A and then when you did not get the response back to claim A that you wanted..........you then scapegoated the conversation to claim B to avoid having to deal w/ claim A. That takes some real cognitive dissonance.

Adam— Selene

Nobody tells me what to say. Who do you think you are? Obama. I voted for him last time. Never again. He had his chance.

I'm not telling you what to say wow. I am telling you that the argument you made is not factually correct or logical. If you want to continue saying it that's up to you- but you cannot change the reality of your own statements. That's called responsibility. You deal w/ the realities of the things you say and do. You make an illogical statement: OK then prepare for people to not be able to follow you and anyone attempting to actually debate you to dismiss you immediately. You make factually incorrect claims then OK prepare for people to not be able to take you seriously. Do what you want, but don't pretend like you're being objective, factually accurate, or logical in your presentation.

At least the rambling lunatic on the street corner has enough sense to recognize this. The fact that you cannot is, like I said, crazy cognitive dissonance.

I was not saying you were telling me what to say. I was replying to Adam_Selene. WOW

El Woodb,

big oppsie on that one. mouzer and vox are your heavy hitter posters and you waste time on me. im flattered. perhaps you are confused with some conversations i had with scottie the other day when i claimed he only said what his masters told him to say. i was not comparing you to scottie or melinda or telling you to say anything. just trying to be helpful.

but thats not how you do it. when you say nobody tells me what to say everyone thinks mercenary troll and pictures you in some gosh awful run down office typing away under the eye of a troll master with a binder full of talking points in front of you.

you have attracted the attention of both mouzer and vox - heavy hitter posters - prime targets. this is where you back down and apologize to them - tell them you lost your cool in the heat of the moment - share some personal tragedy that set you off. back off and approach them again tomorrow but politely. agree with them a few times then start the old i used to believe as you do but here is what started me questioning that belief.

you can do better.

adam_selene

I will meet you half way here elwood and state that when I had read that comment the first time through my mouse died and when it did it stopped just below your address to Adam. So I actually didn't see that until after I had posted the damned thing and it had saved. To the extent that I overreacted to a post that wasn't directly addressed to me I do sincerely prologize. However I do not necessarily believe that my assessment is wrong. You did accuse Rachel of misrepresenting fact when it appears that she did not. You did go on to make several statements about supposed facts that are actually not true. And then you did, upon being challenged on this information, proceed to change the subject as an anti-Obama attack.

Couple of things to keep in mind:

Rachel not saying what you want her to say =/= that Rachel is necessarily partisan or at the very least it does not necessarily mean she is pro-Obama

Not hearing that Obama is terrible every six seconds =/= Obama worship

Bringing up issues of Romney's past or discussing positions Romney has publicly held =/= attacking Romney

People seem unable to understand these fundamental tenets

Additionally Adam I for one found your humorous take on the old Republican talking points quite enjoyable ;-)

I must say I lament the fact that you did not include the caliphate and gaypocalypse in your sarcasm ;-) Shame! =)

I accept your apologize. Just to let you know where I am coming from, let me say this. Sean Hannity bends the truth and lies sometimes too. Rachel also tells the truth most of the time. I am coming down the middle. I call it like I see it.

The links for tonight's show are now posted above - including the complete pledge that Mitt Romney signed....

They post links to their sources, do they? Where? When? Again, look above to Rachel's links for the primary source.

It seems a lot of things are OK if you're a Republican. Drat the luck, I was born a Democrat.

I seek unanimous concent to revise and contract the above to:

"I am your pain!"

(And back to the close-captioning, wow, are they having trouble with Lawrence! I guess MSNBC keeps the top team for Rachel, knowing how fast (yet intelligibly) she talks.)

(sorry about misspelling "consent"!!)

I agree with that.

Congress Republicans mistake their oath of office as being "do what the party wants and finds politically advantageous".

I laugh when I am nervous too: it's a learned means of deflecting the uncomfortableness away. But then again I also can't go more than 6 or 7 seconds w/o cracking a joke because too much serious conversation causes me to also become nervous. I have no more idea of what it means in my case than it does in Romney's.

W/ that said Romney does not appeal to me on any level. He doesn't in regards to his policies and he doesn't in regards to his emotional appeal (although I am always more willing to listen to my "brain" than my "gut" so to speak). The fact that he fails on both levels for me is just weird and not something I'm used to dealing w/.

I did think about nervous laughter at first, but it seems to be something other than that, like he consciously tries to make it seem like a joke.

I try to give a person a chance and listen, even if I know I disagree with them.

Romney's little giggle, or involuntary nervous laughter, is a learned response to make light of a personal misdeed. A defense to try to lessen the impact of an accusation of irresponsible behavior. I know this because, I do it all the time, but then, I'm not running to be the President of the United States. I'm not vying to be the leader of the free world.

His other inappropriate laughter is just an under developed sense of humor, in my opinion.

I have noticed that technique in others that seem to trivialize something that is not really trivial. Bomb, bomb, bomb..snicker. Yes, they went back pretty far, but Romney displays some real sense of entitlement to treat others poorly while leading his "band of brothers" (those like himself) to harass or discount those unlike himself . Not just in his youth, but that trait seems to be rooted.

To be fair, the right went all the way back to Barack Obama's father before he was born, birth certificate, Indonesian school, his church, his former girlfriends…

1/16th is usually considered the cut off, but it does vary from tribe to tribe. For the purpose of admission to most colleges and for the US Census they usually also use 1/16. If Harvard allows for up to 1/32nd then I cannot complain about that since that's their school policy. I am not at all sure what people think they gain in advantage by attacking claims of heritage. Almost all white people who live in America are not 100% one ancestry or another. Most white people, as an example, will claim to be, let's say, Irish. But if you were to do an actual examination of their gene pool you'd find out that MAYBE they are something like 30% Irish and the rest is some other European or white race and hell in all reality they will also have black blood or native blood as well. There's nothing wrong (in my book at least) w/ recognizing your own heritage. I'm just not sure that I'd be attacking people on the fact that 1% is too little to claim or what not. Seems...kinda silly to me.

Since being Native is a legal and cultural identity, not a racial identity, it has major consequences. Various Federal programs open up to you, you have a legal status other Americans can't have, etc. It gets really big--ask Ward Churchill.

The real story here is not Warren's, but Harvard. They exploited her claim to show how diverse they are

It doesn't sound like she did much to object, though.

I think Professor Gates should have Elizabeth do a DNA/geneology search for his project; even Scott Brown's...should clear up and be informative for all....

Wow, good point judy king. Has Warren ever produced any evidence to back up her claim? There are lots of Plastic White Indians out there who just assert they have a "Cherokee Princess" as an ancestor, and that's it (the Cherokee never had princesses, or any kind of "royalty."). A friend sincerely believed she was part Cherokee, but the UKB refused to give her even Associate Membership (what Ward Churchill had) unless she came up with some sort of documentation. Remembered family stories didn't cut it. So how is it with Warren? Good question!

Both sides do it and I wish they would stop. I also get tired of both sides talking about who won what the right or the left. How about the people winning for once.

Actually someone stating that they believe X and then enforcing that belief on others is not socialist (socialism being an economic model and having nothing to do w/ behavioral policy). That would be fascist if you wanted to be correct on the political spectrum OR authoritarian if you wanted to be correct on the philosophical spectrum.

I am curious: what facts did Maddow fail to report on? And when did her interjection of opinion obfuscate those facts?

I think in the abstract it's OK to lament on the idea of punditry news as being the sole source of news broadcasting. That said non-punditry news broadcasts throughout the morning and it carries hardly any views. So I am not sure how you continue the tradition of non-punditry news while maintaining the corporate desire of ratings. Perhaps take corporations out of the equation? But then that would require state owned media or donation ran media. Both will be subject to their own version of propaganda...although in the latter's case it will more than likely to be the focus of campaigns to raise money more so than the former's objective which would likely become fixated on enhancing the position of politicians in power.

Right on annabelle

annabelle,

I think you would be quite pleased with the first 15 minutes of Democracy Now - straight reporting - no commentary. I have found their selection of news topics over the years to be equally unflattering to both the Bush and the Obama administrations. After that, the commentary begins. Keep in mind that reporters are not obliged to report both sides of a story if one side is an obvious lie that a grade school kid with Google could research in two minutes. Certainly you should not watch programs like this one that you feel are not objective. Perhaps you will have a better experience at Democracy Now, RT, or aljazeera English (for mid-east coverage - really quite good). Sorry MSNBC didn't work out for you.

Adam_Selene

Your right on again. Both sides do it. We are that misinformed by the media, but we are not stupid.

"I refuse to believe the American people are that misinformed....."

In 2000, I thought the same thing, I may have even said the same thing. I thought, why aren't they looking at his record in Texas? How can they buy his education crap. Look at his service record, his business record, his college grades!

Then, in 2004, I said to myself, good, we managed to survive four years of idiocy. The American people will pull the lever and blast us into the 21st century. NO! No they did not.

There goes another sheep, following the party.